Monday, February 9, 2015

"Chased Down..."

Hey there Family!!!

How´s life treating you guys? Congrats to Landon for getting accepted to BYU-Idaho! I love that school, I´m sure he´ll have a blast there if that´s what he settles on doing. Also, there´s no need to send the sheet music back with Landon, Mom. Those ones I had to pay for, so I get to keep!

I´ll start by answering the questions that Dad sent. First, my new companion rocks! He´s from Bahia Blanca, Argentina. He´s toward the end of his mission, and still going strong. He´s super goal oriented and likes to plan strategies to achieve those goals, so he and I get a long great. He doesn´t speak much English, but my Portuguese is improving a lot. This last week I made a lot of jumps in my language skills, and I´m pretty thrilled about that. I´m also working hard to increase my vocabularly quickly. Verb tenses that I´d had trouble with in the past are starting to click, and I´m understanding what other people are saying more than not. The work is progressing very well. We hit a bit of a low point this past week. When the assistants were here, we were entirely focused on meeting the goals for January that President Kuceki had set for us. Now that January´s gone, we have to start over again. We´re doing a lot of contacting and have set ourselves up to do a lot of teaching this week. Working with the AP´s and the mission Executive secretary was awesome! They helped me learn how to contact differently, how to help investigators overcome their problems in order to get baptized, and how to work more effectively with other missionaries and the branch members as well. The people here are loving the new chapel. We´ve had a lot of activities there already, and a number of new investigators as a result! It´s perked a lot of curiosity, it´s definitely the prettiest building in Itumbiara. A lot of people have seen it and are curious about it.

After this time in Brazil, here are my impressions. It rocks! I know it´s super cliché, but the people here are the best. There really kind, open to new ideas, outgoing and eager to learn about the gospel. The people in America are wonderful too, but a lot of times it takes a while before you get to know them enough that their comfortable around you. Landon said it really well when he said ´´South American´s think like ´You´re my friend until you become my enemy,´ but in the US we think like ´You´re my enemy until you become my friend.´´´ I think that´s my favorite thing about Brazil is just how cool the people are.

My schedule from last transfer and my new one!

The people here are super ready for the gospel too. Yesterday we literally had someone chase us down, tell us that they want to hear our message (he´d been working with some Elders here a few months earlier), and then walk halfway across town with us! That was pretty cool.

Also, I got two Dearelder letters today, both of them were Kaydon´s mission E-mails. I´ve got to go now, but I love you guys! Keep being awesome and have an excellent week!